Abiro - Mobile News

Mobile market size

2010-03-10T23:23:00.001+01:00

See Cellphone Overshare for a self-explanatory bunch of colorful pies.

“Mobile Operating Systems” is wrong, as it normally tends to be in these kinds of stat collections. It should rather say something like “Smartphone Mobile Application Platforms”, as Nucleus, OSE, Series 30/40, BREW and several other featurephone RTOS’s and platforms are not mentioned, and still the bulk of mobile phones use them. In other words, Symbian is nowhere near 51% of the market. Unfortunately the information doesn’t provide the split between featurephones and smartphones, and I didn’t find any reliable figures to extrapolate the real shares from.

It’s still clear that phones run more and more advanced OS’s and platforms overall, and Symbian and Android will be used in ever lower-cost phones, a market that Apple might not ever want to deal with. Competition in the low-end Android market is likely to be fierce, so margins will become slim.

Babies and dogs can tweet too

2010-03-10T22:48:00.001+01:00

I wrote a long time ago about location of babies and dogs, and now they can tweet too (unknowingly):

Both solutions rely on a PC for performing the Twitter update. Twoddler is based on an off-the-shelf toy, an Arduino board and ZigBee communication.

It would be way more expensive to make toys that would include the mobile radio as well. Yet for other applications, like tweeting the position of the ice cream truck (or whatever), this function would better be implemented as an application for mobile phones.

Will iPad succeed?

2010-03-08T23:06:00.001+01:00

I actually believe it will be a relative flop compared to iPod Touch and iPhone. Partly because it goes against the megatrend of mobility and is too much of a tablet PC. You get a very good laptop or netbook (with a keyboard, more storage, a real PC OS etc) for a lower cost than the iPad, and there’s no subsidizing hiding the cost of the iPad.

Anyway, not everyone agrees:

The iPad Boom Begins: Accessory Makers Rush to Market

Viruses in smartphones

2010-03-07T22:39:00.001+01:00

My second blog post ever (2004) was about viruses in mobile phones, and now it’s very much a reality, or at least a very feasible reality.

Mobile botnets threaten smartphone chaos

Myers-Briggs on the Net

2010-03-07T17:18:00.001+01:00

There are forums for some of the MBTI types. I found “mine” at INTP Central.

Sony to launch own smartphone

2010-03-07T17:09:00.001+01:00

Update 20100308: Sony Ericsson will make the phone(s), but Sony will market them in its name in certain markets, so the phones are still all Sony Ericsson.

The Wall Street Journal: Digits: Sony takes on Apple

The phone will be able to play PSP games. Maybe (under-statement) Sony has noticed the success of the iPod Touch and the iPhone as gaming consoles, and wants a piece of that pie. What will be problematic for Sony is the completely different business model of Apple games (completely free or very low price) compared to games for the PSP.

Might this be a crack in the veneer of the Sony Ericsson collaboration as well?

No more FTP from Blogger. Oh noes!

2010-03-07T17:02:00.001+01:00

Blogger will drop publishing of blogs via FTP, which I use to embed Abiro Mobile News at abiro.com. I’ll likely switch to Wordpress (that I know and love), provided I can export existing content.

This video describes my feelings.

Android won’t / will be fragmented

2010-03-07T16:56:00.001+01:00

Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform?

This anecdote highlights a few things between the lines:

Android Market needs to be vastly improved, with automation for phone-specific applications, a certification process that involves handling those differences, etc.
Android Market needs to serve as a platform upgrade portal, to minimize the fragmentation caused by phones running old platform versions. This will not be easy, due to all the vendor-specific customizations of Android.

Different screen resolutions is just the start of the fragmentation puzzle, yet a very crucial one for e.g. full graphics applications like games. Less so if they are truly 3D, more so if they are sprite-based 2D.

Quote:

Either Google addresses the fragmentation issue immediately or it will find that Android suffers the same fate as Linux on the desktop.

Or as Java ME, but hopefully it will not be that bad.

Reasons for focusing on iPhone for application development:

No fragmentation. You practically develop and test for just one device. iPad has hight resolution, but due to pixel scaling your iPhone / Touch application will still work.
Excellent e-shop, equally good on PC and phone. iTunes is though in my opinion crappy bloatware, even worse than Acrobat Reader. Microsoft has lost the “bloatware war” to Apple and Adobe.

Reasons for focusing on Android for application development:

Less over-exploited/heated application market.
Good chance to still offer unique applications.
2010 is the year of Android establishment.

Leftie or rightie?

2010-03-07T14:07:00.002+01:00

Some claim left-handed people are more creative and/or clever than purely right-handed people.

I write, drink, comb and use a spoon with my left hand, but am otherwise right-handed, and not according to the average ( Which hand do left-handers use for various activities? ). The survey indicates left-handed on average do considerably more than I do with their left hand, like throw, hold, unscrew, kick.

It seems left-handed at least themselves think they are more clever and creative ( What are the effects of being left-handed? ), which actually might rather mean left-handed people are more arrogant and self-righteous. Yet, asking someone about traits supposedly caused by a given group belonging tends to make people lean towards the positive rather than the negative (obviously). Therefore it’s not a scientifically relevant result.

A mentioned benefit of being left-handed: Helps: using a mouse and writing simultaneously (righties can't do that!). If meaning writing on paper, clearly there’s no reason to write anything on paper while using a computer, neither is using a pocket calculator by the way. If meaning using the keyboard, I can’t do that effectively at the same time anyway. I wonder how many can.

I loved this response: As I am only 4 years old I am unable to answer these questions. Clearly written by an adult that wanted to be funny.

Does this mean anything substantial? Most likely not. Whatever your talents, the important thing is to achieve valuable and long-lasting results (career-, money-, power-, social-wise). Bragging about being left-handed won’t help.

The litmus test for entrepreneurs

2010-03-07T13:12:00.001+01:00

Do you accept the ideas of others even though you believe, or even know, they are bad?

Do you drive your own ideas with the conviction that they are good, and make others believe in them too?

In a situation where a lot of money and personal reputation is at stake it’s easy to fall for the siren’s song of the first statement. Therein lies peril: You might feel safer (“It wasn’t my idea, so it’s not my fault if everything goes to hell.”), but if it fails you’ll be as guilty as anyone else of the outcome.

There’s always need for compromises in management teams, as people have different views and different experiences and knowledge, but if you are primarily and persistently going for the first statement, you probably shouldn’t be in a corporate management position. You simply don’t take responsibility.

Why I develop mobile applications

2010-03-04T22:05:00.001+01:00

I was mail-interviewed by Carl Williams at OdinJobs for my thoughts about mobile application development, and here’s the summary together with others’ responses.

Mobile Apps - How To Develop Apps And Get Paid For It.

I forgot to write something about the negative sides of mobile application development, and the biggest negative is that it’s a very uncertain revenue stream, despite what people might say. Developing for others as a consultant or employed provides much more secure revenue and honestly also more revenue compared to direct sales, unless you are really lucky.

Not that developing mobile applications is a very critical part of my business anymore. I now focus on company ownerships and management., with revenue from application and service development on the side.

It can be fun too though.

E-books overtake games at App Store

2010-03-04T19:31:00.001+01:00

Android Market needs improving

2010-03-03T21:55:00.001+01:00

From Android Market: For a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the thousands of titles that are available, you will need to view Android Market on a handset.

I wonder if that’s a good decision, considering it’s much easier to browse applications via a PC, even though they are then downloaded via the phone. It would be very easy for Google to provide the complete catalogue this way too.

Also, don’t you think it’s quite empty on the PC site in general? Very few applications and very little is said about each application. I had to go to each provider’s site to get the full picture of each application. There’s neither any pricing etc.

Android Market has a long way to go to be even close to what Apple has achieved with App Store. Whatever might be the qualities of the phone access to Android Market, PC access is clearly sub par.

Also, iPhone vs Android: iPhone has in my opinion a much better-looking UI with more flexibility. I have still to investigate the new features of Android 2.1.

Android phones will compete head-on with the iPhone even so, and will gain market share through sheer mass, but it’s crucial that the after market with media, applications and gadgets is also top notch.

Twitter expands

2010-03-03T12:29:00.001+01:00

Today’s newsletter from Twitter says they now have 140 employees. That’s a cost of roughly $10M per year, so either they have that level of revenue and/or investors are pumping in that money. I hope the first. As indicated in How to make money from social networks, they should be able to get a sizeable revenue by now, but if it’s at this level I don’t know.

It also says there are something like 70k Twitter applications. That’s an astounding figure. On the negative side, how many of those are profitable in any sense of the word? My own Twitizer is not, except for scraps of ad revenue. It’s really a showcase (that’s at least my excuse), but I’m now considering an opportunity to monetize it. Press release about that is being written as we speak.

This diagram might be interesting, showing the number of Twitter updates over time.

The digital Swiss Army Knife

2010-03-02T00:48:00.001+01:00

The mobile phone is.

From The Next Web: 8 Things Your Phone Will (Probably) Replace

Satellite Navigation Systems
The Humble Alarm Clock
Remote Controls
Payment Terminals
Your Wallet
Car Keys
Portable USB Storage
Video Conferencing/Projectors

Nothing far-fetched really, except I think there will be inertia for Payment Terminals and Your Wallet, and I doubt Video Conferencing will become a hit. Already no one cares for video conferencing (the supposed killer app for 3G).

Also (partly already the case):

Music player (streamed or stored)
Video player (streamed or stored; not the least TV Shows)
Camera and camcorder
Notepad / shopping list
Magazines / News
Books
PC, in terms of applications, communication and digital mingling
etc etc

What makes the newer smartphones so creative and open is that the application fully controls the user experience. That’s a big paradigm shift.

How to make money from social networks

2010-03-01T23:40:00.001+01:00

Well, you know the answer already. Why did it take so long for these service blockbusters to realize the same thing?

BusinessWeek: How Digg Found a Way to Make Money

ITProPortal: Twitter Set To Launch Ad Solution

With enough users, eventually there will be enough amount of clicks (real or stray) to generate a sizable revenue. The problem is to get many users to your service.

Here’s another revenue stream for Twitter, unlimited access to Twitter data:

Twitter Blog: Enabling A Rush of Innovation

iPod Touch, a trend-setter

2010-02-26T14:28:00.001+01:00

The iPod Touch Is This Generation's Tamagotchi

So why is iPod Touch so popular among young people? A few hints:

It’s an excellent portable game console with 3D hardware acceleration, accelerometer, large display etc.
It taps the biggest library of very low cost as well as completely free mobile games and applications; there’s nothing coming even close
It interfaces with all social networking services via optimized and free applications
It’s relatively inexpensive, even compared to other portable game consoles, and way less expensive than an iPhone or similar smartphone

No other portable game console can beat that.

Mobile main tool for social networking

2010-02-24T12:50:00.001+01:00

“The study found that the main attraction of mobile connection is its immediacy. Mobile users can access their networks instantly from anywhere. As a result, 91% of mobile users socialise online, compared with 79% of desktop users.”

TheWhereBusiness: Mobile beats desktop for social networking

Why did Google acquire AdMob?

2010-02-22T00:29:00.001+01:00

I’m aware this is a not too politically correct commentary, neither a light blogging topic, yet as I mention at the end, I don’t in any way criticize the parties involved in the acquisition. I’m only trying to analyze what Google acquired and why. You might for very valid reasons be of a completely different opinion (even if you might be wrong), so feel free to comment. As with all acquisitions of private companies, finding out the real truth and nothing but the truth tends to be close to impossible due to reality distortion generated by the companies and media alike, so I’m not claiming to know all the facts, but I at least know the technologies involved.

I came up with the following reasons:

Google failed with its own attempts to do mobile advertising and felt the time was running out, despite its success in PC advertising. The question is why they acquired AdMob instead of emulating it. More below.
Google was focused on mobile search ads, while AdMob was focused on in-site and in-app ads, hence a nice complement.
Google wanted to get rid of an increasingly affecting/noisy competitor, as AdMob is the biggest ad broker within specifically mobile advertising. Even if AdMob didn’t hurt Google, it probably itched a bit.
Google wanted to stop its competitors from acquiring AdMob. Google has to stay on top of the ad revenue race in competition with Yahoo!, Microsoft etc, so measures were required.
Google wanted to save market and technical development time.
Google wanted to get AdMob’s customer accounts.
Google wanted to get hold of AdMob’s backoffice system (mobile stats has been mentioned as a valuable complement, and Adwords is in my opinion unnecessarily hard to use, by design).

You don’t need more reasons than that, but if you think they are mainly technical and specifically regarding mobile technologies, you don’t know the actual technologies involved. Not that the complexity of technology is in any way proportional to the health of a business.

Considering Google already has a hefty inventory and the backoffice ad technology, providing small in-app ad gadgets as well would be very simple. It would be even simpler to provide the “form factor” needed for in-site ads, as Google Adwords text-only ads are already well suited for mobile use (a title, two short lines of text and a link).

I’ve been surprised every time AdMob got an innovation award, considering what the company does is a very basic form of click advertising, hence not innovative at all technically or business-wise, without even awareness of content context (which Adwords supports), yet AdMob now provides positioned ads with greater granularity for smartphones. Also that would be very simple to add to Adwords though.

There are ways that AdMob is innovative, but I doubt these were what the award juries considered:

AdMob is quite profitable, and has had a sound revenue model at the core from day one. Click advertising is simply a very good business model, and a very proven one too, so AdMob didn’t really have to tread any new ground. You can’t say that about many other mobile (or even Web) services. That’s innovative, right? Due to knowing this we actually discussed moving into the mobile click ad business when mm3 was founded during 2007, but for different reasons we came to focus on other things.
AdMob started off as a service that was completely void of anything mobile on a technical level, yet being promoted as a mobile ad service: Providing short text-only ads on mobile sites doesn’t require any knowledge of the device it’s shown on, not even that it’s a mobile phone, so the ads could as well be shown on a PC. Neither was SMS or any other mobile-specific technology involved, meaning no need to set up partnerships with any operators or service aggregators. This meant the company was completely free to focus on the ad engine and viral promotion for worldwide use, initially not having to think much or at all about the delivery. Again, this applies to the starting up of AdMob and maybe the first two years thereafter. It’s not the case now, but again, what followed wasn’t complicated either.
AdMob started off as a company that helped mobile site providers promote their sites on other mobile sites, as mobile search and mobile directories didn’t exist at the time (and arguably still don’t). That’s kind of a grassroots beginning, but required initially no negotiation with large ad publishers, that would be very hard without an established ad network. When the inventory and “shopping windows” reached some mass, such publishers could be brought in to complement the mobile site ads. At that time it could be proven that there was actually an ad network.

Interestingly, Apple has now stopped Google/AdMob from providing positioned ads, which takes away part of the value of the acquisition, but this might be temporary until Apple has finalized the acquisition of Quattro and provided their own positioned ads via them. I doubt they will open for this possibility before then.

Was the company worth $750M? In this virtual and almost surrealistic economy of Web services it seems that anything goes. There has been a lot of guesswork about the last year revenue of AdMob, so I won’t quote any of those. In any case AdMob had a good revenue and margin, and having something like 100 employees indicates the business was very sound. Also, without a doubt Google easily sinks the cost of AdMob. It will hardly make a dent in the armor.

Many Web services are un- or hardly profitable, relying on investors to pump in money (this is still the case even for Twitter), and I’m sure there will be many that (even more now) hope they will be acquired as well. It’s also to be expected that other companies within Google’s field of business (ad revenue from search etc) will gobble up other mobile advertising companies, as it’s clearly the right time for it. It’s also clear providers of mobile advertising will see the Google deal as a way to justify a high acquisition cost.

Again, I’m not in any way criticizing the founders/owners of AdMob nor the M&A folks at Google. It’s all business as usual. I was well aware that this could and would become big from the day AdMob was founded, but didn’t act. S**t happens.

I can’t say I’m a fan of ads in any shape or form (when talking mobile I find animated ads in mobile games extremely annoying, as it takes focus away from the game play), and I doubt many are, including people within the ad business, when it comes to being force-fed ads themselves, yet I realize that ads are needed and will never go away, and what we see now is just a natural evolution from TV and paper magazines over to digital and interactive media, and increasingly mobile.

Moving on, turning the page, looking ahead…

2010-02-21T22:10:00.001+01:00

My project leader role in the Motimate project is at an end (yet I remain co-founder and technical advisor in Trivendia), I’ve left as CEO for Mobile Labs (yet I remain chairman and active in other roles), I’m no longer active in mm3 nor Netville (at least for the time being), and I’m in the process of converting Abiro into a holding company.

That means I’m open for new business. From now on I intend to better balance risk and security, with the goal of becoming completely independent before my next “if (($age % 10) == 0) break;” birthday.

If anyone has an opportunity that consists of preferably creative IT product strategy and visionary work that makes use of my knowledge in mobile and related technologies, and that has nice benefits, I’m all ears.

Do you want to set up a Twitter or Facebook clone? Sure you do.

2010-02-21T22:04:00.001+01:00

Twitter

Here’s a (slightly dated) listing of ready-to-go and open source microblogging services, primarily written in PHP, but there’s one also for ASP: 9 Open Source Microblogging Applications. Some even have accompanying mobile applications, also open source. I’m quite certain they are as good as or better than Twitter. That’s the easy part. Getting millions of users is the not so easy part.

Facebook

If you want to make a Facebook clone, you can come rather close with e.g. Ning, that is free but with ads, that even has Facebook-like applications. There are also commercial products, like from Agriya, etc.

The overshadowed emerging mobile markets

2010-02-21T21:48:00.001+01:00

I call them overshadowed due to the overwhelming focus in media and the minds of people on mobile applications on smartphones right now. Consider though that the vast majority of users don’t have iPhones and similar advanced and information-centric mobile phones. Most people don’t even know how to download mobile applications.

When it comes to covering the lion share of the market for the mentioned phenomena, other criteria apply.

Tickets and Coupons

SMS is the best way to transfer tickets, that works on absolutely all phones and is usually enough to convey the message, and is very reliable and low-cost, unless you don’t charge for the tickets. Consider that the cost of an SMS is below 0.02 €/$ via bulk providers, not counting the cost of providing the higher-level service.

If you want to convey more than the usual, and get a better look-n-feel, use MMS (self-contained) or SMS with a link to a mobile landing page (requires the user to follow the link).

There are certainly still many users without, or with very expensive, data communication. In that case SMS will always work, still with a possible link to a more detailed page, but the ticket/coupon information should preferably be complete in the SMS itself.

Positioning

To get enough accuracy for consumer-oriented “What’s/Who’s near you?” or professional-oriented “Where’s the truck/goods/personnel right now?” type services, cell-based positioning is often enough. Knowing that a truck is in country A (delivering) and not in country B (smuggling) might be all you need to know. No offense to you, if you happen to live in country B.

Network-based cell positioning (mapping cell IDs to GPS positions) is preferred, as it’s device independent. An issue is that being able to read out the position might require collaboration with many parties, so the market really needs aggregators to be able to provide services that reach beyond country boundaries.

You can read out the cell information from within at least Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia Series 60 phones, but that requires an application in the phone, which is a problem for mass market use.

Of course you need to provide opt-in for positioning in consumer services. If you provide such services for corporate use you can probably get away with letting the management decide who should be positioned, provided the ones being positioned are told.

P.S.

As many have said before me, positioning is not in itself a service, it’s a service enabler. Kind of like SMS. It’s a clean slate. The usages are vast once you start to think about it.

If you are in Sweden, you can try out network-based positioning in a simple way by sampling a few of my SMS services, namely:

här (here) – positioned map sent back to you (a la simple car finder etc)
gmail – positioned (geo) e-mail (with the message and a map link)
gsms – positioned (geo) SMS (with the message and a map link)

More information is available via mobiltliv.se (PC or mobile; in Swedish). Please read the “Villkor” before use.

D.S.

Twitizer at the hair dresser

2010-02-19T21:42:00.001+01:00

As many have their PC screens set to 800 pixel height or less, I trimmed the top of the main and landing pages by shortening the description and moving both rating and rotation below the content. That way more of the content is shown.

Ideally all of a photo or video would be shown without scrolling, and it’s not quite there yet. Maybe I should lose the curly menu as well, going for a clean shave.

Enough with hair dresser analogies…

Mac Mini, makes my mind muse

2010-02-19T20:44:00.001+01:00

Well, the price is really too high (twice the price of a vanilla Windows/Linux PC with the same hardware configuration), but design-wise it’s in many ways ideal for an office:

It’s really small, almost like a DVD drive for a PC; it’s almost invisible beside my gami…sorry…development PC
It’s absolutely silent; my desktop PC is definitely not; not even my laptop comes close
It has all the connectors and communication technologies you’ll ever need
It’s fast enough, has memory enough and hard disk enough to handle most white collar requirements, including for development
You can use almost any keyboard, mouse and screen with it. I use a wireless Microsoft EX 100 PC kbd/mouse combo and a Sony 20” screen shared with my PC; the drawback is that special keys are not mapped correctly
You can get a remote control and connect it to a TV via DVI, to get a very lean and mean entertainment machine
It looks pretty good and very solid; not like the “bent aluminum plate”-feel PCs usually have
It’s a great podium for my Smurfs

Why on earth doesn’t Dell etc sell PCs with this form factor, or rather why don’t companies ask for such PCs? Dell had such a series a year ago, but they dropped it. Due to lack of customer interest? If so, something is clearly wrong in the way companies think about workspace, noise, environment, ergonomics etc.

I’m sure some will ask, why not buy a laptop? Well, laptops have tiny screens. If they don’t they are way over-priced, so a mini PC using separate cost-optimized keyboard, mouse and screen will be much more cost efficient and much more ergonomic. This is provided you won’t move around with the PC. I wouldn’t be able to work without a laptop, no doubt.

In my case the purchase of a Mac Mini was for the sole purpose of developing iPhone OS applications, and as such it fits in nicely beside my over-sized and pretty noisy desktop PC and my slightly over-aged and under-achieving laptop.

Mobile Premier Awards winners

2010-02-18T21:36:00.001+01:00

And the Mobile Premier Awards winners are....!

As far as I can see, all are about services, even though often presented via mobile applications, which obviously will be even more the rule than the exception in the future.

Sweden’s contribution MoSync didn’t win any award though.